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I think I recall stating that I was hoping to blog a little more frequently about my STO exploits. I also recall stating that I would give a ground fleet action another go. Well, what do you know … I’m about to kill two birds with one stone. ^^;

Yesterday I had an opportunity to participate in a couple of fleet actions. Fresh out-of-the-gate I stumbled into the Crystalline Entity fleet action. Unfortunately I forgot to snap some screenshots, but I’ll be making a return visit to snap some pictures and hopefully join a group that knows what they’re doing. Well to be fair I had no clue what I was doing, but the general banter in the zone was eerily reminiscent of battleground chat in WoW.

Needless to say there was zero direction and zero cooperation. We’d get the entity down to 96% or so and then magically it would heal back up to 100% and so went the vicious cycle until I decided to abandon the mission and try my luck later. I’ll have to look up some leet strats for tackling the entity and then hope the next group is a little more receptive to implementing the strategy.

After the fail-fleet at the Crystalline Entity I licked my wounds and ventured off to tackle some standard missions and make my way out to the Pi Canis sector block to take care of a mission I had out there. When I finally arrived at the Laurention system I discovered that I the mission I had in my log was a space fleet mission. Sweet!

The calm before the storm.

I forget what the name of the mission was exactly, but it dealt with stopping a Klingon scouting fleet in the Laurention system. As usual with most missions in the game, there were a number of objectives to accomplish in sequence which culminated in an epic battle against a Klingon flagship and its escorts which were a +3 con to me.

I almost bought the farm twice, but I managed to keep myself up and provided plenty of assistance during the battle. At the conclusion of the encounter I managed to place 5th on the damage meters and scored a Quantum Torpedo Launcher Mk III [CrtD] from one of escorts.

After I swapped out my fore photon torpedo launcher I quickly came to one conclusion: quantum torpedoes are freaking amazing! They travel faster, hit slightly harder than photon torpedoes and just look cooler. I’ve since replaced my aft photon torpedoes with quantum torpedoes and don’t foresee myself going back, ever.

As I previously stated, I said that I’d give another ground fleet action a try and hope for better results. Fortunately the Laurention system offered a ground fleet action mission in addition to the space mission, so I decided to give it a go …

Ice Mining?! Again?

I’m not sure how, but I managed to jump into the Ice Mining mission again. I’m pretty sure my first go at the mission came in the Eta Eridani sector block, but maybe this particular mission can be undertaken from multiple systems. Despite strong desires to immediately abandon the mission I conceded that I would give a ground fleet action another shot, so in I went and hoped for the best.

Initially things were chaotic, but eventually I managed to “group up” with a small group of captains and we managed to limp through the first two objectives to the brick-wall I had previously encountered a couple nights prior. After a complete wipe, the small group I was running with encountered another small group of captains and together we formed a small army.

Teamwork is a requirement for ground fleet actions.

As with all fleet actions in STO, when everyone groups up and works together objectives are accomplished relatively painlessly. Our small army cut through the waves of Klingons with little resistance. What few casualties we suffered were remedied by other captains resuscitating the fallen; teamwork at its finest.

It still took a long time to clear the outer-ring and disable 20 consoles, but we accomplished the third objective to only be met with a fourth. Fortunately the fourth objective only required killing 100 Klingons (/wrists). In the end we proved victories and we raised our blood-wine in celebration of being free to do something else … anything else.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever voluntarily join another ground fleet action after my first two experiences with the mission type. Ice Mining is a horribly designed and executed mission which bored me to tears with how long it took. I am thankful that my second foray with the mission proved successful, but if I encounter another ground fleet action similar to Ice Mining, someone at Cryptic is going to pay.